The Wrong Stuff

For the next two months, all these artistically valid tchotchkes are gathered under one West Chelsea roof.

The sprawling International Contemporary Furniture Fair (which runs May 19 to 22 at the Javits Center) may contain a wealth of contemporary design. But what it doesn’t do is represent how design, art, and fashion have mixed together so completely that, well, who knows what to call that thing hanging on your wall? Nothing makes this point of perplexity more brilliantly than the pop-up shop the Wrong Store, the brainchild of artist-designer Tobias Wong and Gregory Krum, retail director of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. Opening this Saturday in a six-by-ten-foot space at 259 Tenth Ave (nr. 25th St.; 212-982-1475) in West Chelsea, the Wrong Store blurs design/fashion/art works by Richard Prince, Marcel Wanders, Herzog & de Meuron, Rodarte, Douglas Coupland, Maison Martin Margiela, Hella Jongerius, and others. Wong said the idea of the shop was to create something “small but pungent.” That certainly describes the merchandise, like this Marcel Wanders “One Minute Sculpture,” a ceramic dog-bunny-thing that the designer formed in, yes, one minute and finished with a gold metallic glaze. What to call it? How about “knickknack”?